KTLA’s Sam Rubin Remembers TV News Innovator John Silva: Video

John Silva, who for nearly 25 years was KTLA-Los Angeles‘ chief engineer, died Wednesday night at age 92. Sam Rubin today on KTLA Morning News offered up a touching remembrance of Silva, a former Navy radar operator who was responsible for such innovations as the news helicopter (first introduced in 1958, Silva called it the “telecopter”), live news trucks and mountaintop antennas. He also engineered the first live Rose Parade broadcast. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that every television station in the world uses some form of one of John Silva’s ideas”, Rubin says. Here’s the segment, complete with great old footage (beware the autoplay):